http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/julio/mier15/29discurso-ing.html
Havana. July 15, 2009
We are calling for the urgent construction of a new international
financial architecture
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt. - Cuban President Raúl Castro affirmed here today
that unity and solidarity among the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement are
indispensable requirements for increasing the impact of our positions.
In opening remarks to the 15th Summit, at the Maritim Jolie Ville
Convention Center in this Egyptian resort town, Raúl Castro affirmed that
success is based on consolidation of the unity emanating from the diversity
that characterizes us.
SPEECH BY THE GENERAL OF THE ARMY AT THE 15TH NAM SUMMIT, EGYPT, 7-15-2009
Most Excellent Mr. Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, president of the Arab Republic
of Egypt:
Distinguished heads of state and government:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I would like to express, on behalf of my delegation, gratitude to the
Egyptian government and people for the excellent welcome they have given us. We
are convinced that the Non-Aligned Movement will emerge from this 15th summit
conference even stronger, and Cuba will fully support the work of Egypt at the
head of it.
It is an honor for our country to hand over the leadership of the
Movement to Egypt, one of its founder members. From the very first moment, the
Cuban Revolution has found friendship and support in this Arab nation, with
which this year we are celebrating six decades of uninterrupted and fraternal
relations.
We have not forgotten the noble gesture of President Gamal Abdel Nasser,
one of the founding fathers of non-alignment, in visiting compañero Fidel
Castro Ruz, then prime minister of the revolutionary government, when they were
both in New York in 1960 to participate in the 15th Session of the United
Nations General Assembly, and where the Cuban leader was subjected to
discriminatory and insulting treatment by the U.S. authorities.
The Ministerial Meeting of the Coordination Bureau of the Non-Aligned
Movement, which took place in Havana from April 27-30 this year, met its
principal objective of preparing this 15th summit conference. The ministers and
heads of delegations meeting there reached consensus on positions regarding the
most urgent issues for humanity and particularly for developing countries.
The Special Declaration on the Economic and Financial World Crisis,
adopted at that meeting, is testimony to the transcendence of the debates and
of our decision to participate in a coordinated way in order to solve
international problems. The Movement has confirmed its conviction that all
countries in the world should take part in the search for effective and just
solutions to the current crisis.
As we said in Havana, the developing countries are the most affected by
the global economic crisis. Hundreds of millions of people in the world,
particularly in our nations, are victims of illiteracy, unemployment, hunger,
poverty and curable diseases, which causes human beings resident in the South
of the planet to be condemned at birth to live shorter, worse lives that those
who inhabit the industrialized North.
Ironically, as is almost always the case, it was in the rich countries
that the current crisis originated, a consequence of the structural imbalances
and irrationality of an international economic system based on the blind laws
of the market, egotism, consumerism and the wastefulness of a few at the cost
of our peoples' suffering.
We are calling for the urgent construction of a new international
financial architecture, based on the real participation of all countries,
especially developing countries. The current crisis cannot be solved with
cosmetic measures which, at bottom, are an attempt to preserve the current
economic system, plagued with serious shortcomings, unjust, lacking in fairness
and ineffective. The solution to the global economic crisis must necessarily
involve the re-foundation of the international monetary system.
A pattern of monetary reference must be achieved that is not dependent on
the economic stability, legislation or political decisions of a single state,
no matter how powerful or influential.
Several countries, including Cuba, supported this position at the recent
United Nations high-level conference on the impact of the economic and
financial crisis on development.
A new system should recognize the particular conditions of developing
countries and grant them special and differentiated treatment, and it should
promote a just and equitable international economic order based on sustainable
development, whose institutions are subordinated to the United Nations system.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen:
I have the honor of presenting you with Cuba's report on the activities
of the Non-Aligned Movement in the last three years. The document, extensive
and detailed, will be distributed to all delegations. The exercise of the
presidency has confirmed to us, as the most important conclusion, that unity
and solidarity among the countries that comprise the Movement are indispensable
requirements for increasing the impact of our positions.
The Movement's strength lies in its ability to reach consensus as a
result of frank debate. All members have had the opportunity to participate in
formulating and defending our agreements and lines of action. Success is based
on consolidating the unity that emanates from the diversity that characterizes
us.
In 1961 we numbered 25 countries in the Movement, and Cuba was the only
Latin American one. Today we have 118 member states; therefore, we constitute a
majority in the international community. But we have not just grown in number;
in addition, history has demonstrated the justness of our aspirations and
goals. Our demands cannot be ignored, nor can decisions on the principal
problems facing humanity be adopted without the Movement's active
participation.
The common challenges for the non-aligned countries are serious and
numerous. Never before has the world been so unequal and its inequities so
profound. But, along with the challenges, our Movement's capacity for
resistance and its strength have also grown.
We have faced threats and aggression, condemned unjust treaties in
international trade and finance, and demanded our full participation in the
highest authorities of world governance. A decisive part of Cuba's presidency
coincided with one of the most aggressive and hegemonic governments, one of the
greatest violators of international law, that has ever existed in the United
States.
The conduct of the Movement, even in the most complex circumstances, has
been guided by the founding principles of Bandung, and in a more recent period,
by the "Declaration on Purposes and Principles and on the Role of the NAM at
the Current International Juncture," adopted at the 14th Summit Conference in
Havana. Both documents provide a programmatic basis for collectively facing the
enormous challenges posed in order to fight for a better world, where the right
of our peoples to peace, self-determination and development are respected.
It is important to continue systematically evaluating the mechanisms and
methodology of the NAM in order to employ its potential to the maximum. The
leadership of the presidency is crucial. Its authority is consolidating by
facilitating consensus and firmness in defending the accords adopted and their
implementation.
The agreements reached will be maintained as a legacy of the Non-Aligned
Movement Plan of Action. The promotion of multilateralism and democratization
of international relations, full respect for the United Nations Charter and
international law are essential to the Movement's very existence and effective
work. We have rejected anti-democratic methods, a lack of transparency,
obstacles to full participation and discrimination in multilateral
deliberations and negotiations.
The NAM should be present in every multilateral setting relevant to
defending the interests of developing countries. Its objective will never be
competition, but complementation with other coordination mechanisms for the
countries of the South.
In this context, substantial progress has been made in the labors of the
NAM Joint Coordination Committee and the Group of 77, an instrument that is
being consolidated and whose impact is growing, and which therefore we should
continue supporting.
Preserving international peace and security should continue being a
fundamental priority for the Movement. A pending and urgent goal continues to
be the total elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction.
We are far from reaching our objectives in this area and our work must
continue until they are achieved. It is irrational that while annual military
spending is increasing at a dizzying rate, and has now reached the chilling
figure of $1.464 trillion, almost 60% of it concentrated in just one country,
the total of hungry people in the world is close to one billion.
The resources currently allocated to the war industry should be used for
education, health and culture, the economic and social well-being of our
peoples. For that, political will and real commitment are needed. Hegemonic
projects, the threat and use of force, egotism and the irrational wastefulness
of a few must all be renounced. We must put an end to an international order
based on the exercise of imperialist designs.
Another priority of the Non-Aligned Movement has been to ensure greater
participation from the South in the work and decision-making process of the
United Nations Security Council. Progress has been made in the work of the
Non-Aligned Caucus in this body. However, we still have a long way to go. We
are not taking advantage of all of our current potential and our actions still
do not have decisive weight in agreements reached there. Of course, there are
structural problems that can only be overcome with a profound democratization
of the Security Council as part of the reforms required by the UN.
The stable and dynamic functioning of the Coordination Bureau and the
consolidation of its eight working groups have made it possible to consolidate
the positions of the non-aligned countries in key processes in the framework of
the United Nations. The decisions of the Coordination Bureau in New York have
increasingly greater scope and transcendence.
Support for the just cause of Palestine and those of other occupied Arab
peoples has been and will continue to be at the center of the Non-Aligned
Movement's actions. We have not hesitated to condemn the aggression and crimes
of Israel, the occupying power. We will not rest until we see the
implementation of the demands of our Palestinian and Arab brothers and sisters.
There is no path other than dialogue and negotiation for achieving a just and
lasting peace in the entire Middle East region, which inevitably involves the
founding of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its
capital. The Non-Aligned Movement is committed to continue supporting one of
its members, the sister people of the Republic of Honduras, in their struggle
against the brutal coup d'état that usurped power from the constitutional
government of that country. It also has the duty of demanding the
implementation of the United Nations General Assembly agreement to restore
President José Manuel Zelaya to his office, without the humiliating conditions
they are attempting to impose on him, and to continue denouncing the repression
and murder of our Honduran brothers and sisters.
The Movement has become reactivated within UNESCO. There is sufficient
leeway to continue strengthening and consolidating its actions in that
organization, where the efforts of the non-aligned countries are fundamental to
making real such indispensable objectives as education for all, respect for
cultural diversity, the preservation of humanity's cultural heritage, and an
end to the brain drain of our countries of the South, as well as to overcoming
the vast gap between poor and rich nations in terms of information and
communication.
The Non-Aligned Movement is an indispensable actor in the Human Rights
Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. We should prepare for the Human Rights Council
institutional review.
Our objective is to preserve the approach of cooperation, respect and
dialogue in terms of promoting and protecting human rights for all. We cannot
allow the Council to return to the practices that ended up miring the extinct
Human Rights Commission in discredit.
Particularly important is the progress that has been made in coordinating
our actions within the World Health Organization and the International Labor
Organization. That is a necessity, given the transcendence for developing
countries of issues discussed there. With the annual meetings of our ministers
of health and labor, and the decisions they adopt, the Movement has given an
essential boost to defending the interests of the South in those international
organizations.
In the WHO, for example, we have pressing objectives ahead, such as
stopping the deaths of 10 million children every year from preventable
diseases; reverting the 40-year difference in life expectancy between the
richest and poorest countries; expanding training for health personnel in
developing countries; and demanding greater attention to the diseases that
affect our peoples.
Cuba is a small developing country that does not have a surplus of
resources and moreover has suffered the longest, all-embracing and cruelest
system of unilateral sanctions on the part of a powerful state.
Despite the almost unanimous demands of the international community,
opposition from its own people and promises of change by the new U.S.
government, the reality today is that the illegal blockade imposed almost five
decades ago against Cuba is still being implemented.
Once again, we express our gratitude for the solidarity of countries that
maintain the firm position of demanding an immediate halt to that unjust
policy, increasingly unsustainable in moral terms, and which is increasing the
effects of the world financial and economic crisis on my country.
Even in these difficult circumstances, our people have modestly
demonstrated how much can be done, when the political will exists, in terms of
international solidarity and cooperation, particularly in the area of health.
Almost 15,000 Cuban medical collaborators are working in 98 countries to
save lives and prevent disease. More than 32,000 young people from 118 states,
principally in the Third World, are studying free of charge at our educational
centers, 78% of them, in the specialty of medicine.
These figures represent just a negligible part of what could be achieved
if egotism gave way to cooperation and solidarity, if we unit to fight against
a system of exploitation and plunder that tends to reproduce underdevelopment
and widen the distance between a small group of rich nations, where just 20% of
the world population lives, and the vast periphery made up of our countries,
inhabited by 80% of humanity.
We are convinced that a better world is possible. In the struggle to
achieve it, the Non-Aligned Movement is called upon to play a fundamental role.
While everything we have achieved together is encouraging, it is more
important for us to be aware of the enormous challenges ahead.
Six years ago, in thanking Kuala Lumpur for the decision adopted by the
13th Summit to designate Cuba as president of the Movement beginning in 2006,
Commander in Chief Fidel Castro assured that from that position, Cuba was
willing to "work to consolidate the actions of the Movement, inside and outside
of the United Nations, in the fight for peace, justice, equality of
opportunities, respect for the principles of international law that have always
been the very basis of the Movement, and in the fight for development and
against an international economic and financial order that marginalizes us and
makes us increasingly poorer and more dependent."
With the healthy, humble pride of having done our duty, we hand over to
Egypt the presidency of our Movement. Beyond dissatisfactions that we may have,
above all regarding everything we could have done better, we can affirm that we
have a revitalized Movement, which will continue playing the international role
that belongs to it in today's world.
I reiterate, in the name of the Cuban government and people, our
gratitude to everyone for the support you have offered us during these three
years. You may be sure that our commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement will
remain unchanging.
I reaffirm our most sincere friendship with and recognition of every one
of you, with whom we have shared the trenches in the combat against
colonialism, apartheid, interventionism, the arms race, economic exploitation,
disease and illiteracy, and from whom we have always received solidarity in the
just struggle of my people to preserve their sovereignty and independence, and
to overcome the illegal obstacles unilaterally imposed on their right to
development.
All that remains for me, and I am honored to do so, is to propose to this
plenary to elect by acclamation the new president of the Non-Aligned Movement,
his Most Excellent Mr. Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, president of the Arab Republic of
Egypt.
I understand that everybody agrees. My congratulations for the new
president and our best wishes for success.
Thank you very much. (PL)
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